http://www.silentlambs.org/education/jwaccused.cfm





Jehovah's Witnesses accused of
building 'paedophile paradise'

http://www.sundayherald.com/26260

By Torcuil Crichton
Sunday Herald

Scottish branch of world church alleged to have sheltered abusers and kept
information from police

The Jehovah's Witnesses Church in Scotland stands accused of sheltering
child abusers and keeping secret files of known paedophiles within the
organisation which it refuses to share with police.
After a successful prosecution over child abuse within a Jehovah's
Witnesses family in Ayrshire, Scottish police are understood to be preparing to
bring a further case to court in the northeast.

The Jehovah's Witnesses church, which has six million members around the
world, has been convulsed by revelations that its elders have protected sex
offenders, failed to report accusations to the police and even punished children
and families making accusations.

The Watch Tower, the church's worldwide head quarters in Brooklyn, is
struggling to regain its battered authority after a string of child abuse cases
stretching from the US to Scotland. An investigation by the BBC's Panorama
programme has discovered that the Watch Tower Society keeps a worldwide database
of members accused of child abuse. The list, which is claimed to contain more
than 20,000 names, is based on details held by each Jehovah's Witnesses
congregation and many of the names on that list have never been reported to the
police.

Allegations of child abuse within the church first emerged in Scotland in
the quiet seaside town of Stevenson in Ayrshire when 19-year-old Alison Cousins
went to the police after being branded a liar by church elders to whom she had
turned for help.

Cousins, who was brought up in the Jehovah's Witnesses, went to her church
elders three years ago with the shocking allegation that her father, a respected
member of the congregation, had been sexually abusing her.

Cousins, who followed the strict church rules that any allegations of
wrongdoing must be dealt with within the congregation, broke down as she told
her story to the men who dispensed moral guidance to the flock. In return she
was told that she should do nothing.

'They told me that one of the scriptures in the Bible was that you should
never take your brother to court,' Cousins told Panorama. 'And I said to them,
'Well what are you meant to do then if he's doing something wrong?' And they
said, 'Come to us and we'll deal with it.''

The church law which dictates that members must turn to elders rather than
the police also demands that there must be two witnesses to a crime before
taking any action. The biblical citation for this is found in Deuteronomy 19:15:
'No single witness should rise up against a man respecting any error or any sin.
At the mouth of two witnesses or at the mouth of three witnesses the matter
should stand good.'

In instances of child abuse, where there are no witnesses other than the
child involved, critics of the church say the guide lines amount to a
'paedophile paradise'.

Eventually, because she didn't have corroborating witness statements for
the elders, Cousins went to the police last year and as their investigation
began, she made a shocking discovery. Church elders had known for three years
that her father had been abusing her older sister, that he had confessed to the
church but that no action had been taken.

Her father, Ian Cousins, who has since been prosecuted and sentenced to
five years in jail, had merely been reprimanded by the elders and sent home
where his abuse simply shifted from one sister to the other.

The way Cousins's case was dealt with by the church is not an isolated
incident. The Jehovah's Witnesses are now reeling from a series of scandals
worldwide and allegations that its self-styled Child Protection Policy does
nothing but protect abusers and fails to ensure allegations of abuse are
reported to the authorities.

According to its critics, child abusers within the organisation are
protected by its strict biblical laws and the threat that any member
disregarding the advice of elders by going to the police faces the prospect of
being denounced and cast out of the congregation.

The organisation insists that it has a strict child protection policy and
defends the database of self-confessed offenders as part of its strategy of
dealing with abuse without referring to the judicial system.

The church keeps the existence of the list a closely guarded secret. Watch
Tower states that it uses the list to monitor the activities of the men who
stand accused of raping and molesting children. But former members of the church
claim that keeping the list secret effectively shields abusers and allows abuse
to continue. In the American Bible belt of Kentucky, Bill Bowen, who has spent
his lifetime as a Jehovah's Witness and more than 20 years as an elder, claims
the organisation covers up abuse by keeping this database secret.

According to Bowen, who has become a thorn in the flesh of the
organisation, his sources inside Watch Tower indicate there are 23,720 abusers
on the secret list -- who are protected by the system.

'Every detail is written down about what happened ,' said Bowen. ' If this
man moves anywhere, then if any allegation surfaces again, this is the way they
monitor these people.'

The church in the UK and the US refuses to discuss the list or its details
with anyone not personally involved in a case. It was that wall of anonymity
that allowed Cousins's father to remain at home and unchecked with his daughters
at risk.

Bowen began his campaign to expose the church after having to handle an
abuse case in his own congregation and becoming disturbed by the pressure it
puts on the victim.

'When an allegation of abuse happens, parents are required to go to the
elders first,' said Bowen. ' If the abuser denies the charge, they will turn
back to the child and say, 'Do you have two eye witnesses to what happened?'
That means the child and one other witness .'

According to Bowen, if there is not a basis to establish the allegation
with two witnesses, the pressure is then turned on the accuser. If there is no
corroborating evidence, the members making the allegations are warned not to
repeat them against an 'innocent' or cause division in the church on pain of
being 'disfellowshipped' -- effective lifetime exile.

'They're told if they don't obey these elders that God will kill them, and
how God kills them is that when you're disfellowshipped, you're viewed as being
dead,' said Bowen. 'It's like the biblical edict of stoning. Your own mother and
father will not acknowledge you in public. Your own children will not speak to
you.

'And they have a choice, they can be silent and retain their family and
every friend they've known for the last 40 years, or, if they speak out, they
will lose all that overnight.'

The wall of silence around abuse cases and the stipulation that there must
be two witnesses before any action is taken has prevented thousands of
prosecutions, according to US police.

Jack Zeller, a US police officer who dealt with several child abuse cases
sees the irony. 'Unfortunately, most kids don't have several witnesses observing
them get raped,' he said.

The same levels of obstruction and unco-operativeness have been
encountered by police in the UK tackling allegations of child abuse within the
church. Police investigations into allegations of sexual abuse within the
Jehovah's Witnesses community in Birmingham were frustrated for a long time by
elders in the church.

Steve Colley, an investigating officer with West Midlands police, was
shocked by the determination of elders not to co-operate with his inquiries into
allegations of abuse in a Birmingham congregation.

'I was surprised,' said Colley. 'They actually said to me unless I could
provide two Jehovah's Witnesses who'd actually seen the offence, then as far as
they were concerned the offence hadn't taken place.'

Despite this, each congregation keeps copious records regarding any
spiritual infraction or wrongdoing committed within the church. Records of Ian
Cousins's abuse of his eldest daughter were lodged but were only obtained by
Cousins under data protection legislation. The papers show that the Jehovah's
Witnesses in Ayrshire and in the organisation's headquarters knew for three
years before she asked them for help that her father was a self- confessed
paedophile. Instead of enabling elders to monitor him, the records showed they
twice turned a blind eye to his abuse of his daughters.

'It is a paedophile paradise created by Jehovah's Witnesses,' said Bill
Bowen.

'An abuser can go into any congregation, remain anonymous, have access to
more children through activities in the church, and all he has to do is just
keep denying it and he will have the confidentiality clause in Watch Tower
policy to enable him to continue .'







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